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Monday, November 14, 2011

I don't read Red Alert, I don't even go there. I treat it like one of the inner circles of Hell, a place to be avoided at all costs ... Well, not really quite like that. I find socialists drop dead boring. Years ago when I was really trying to understand their logic, I tried reading some heavy duty communist rantings and couldn't go on. It was not at all captivating in the way that something that is good and true is. And after a number of years on the Blogosphere I've found that many socialists are just as boring as the communists rantings I tried to read all those years ago. When it comes down to it, socialists do not have a good plan for the world, therefore it's best not to listen to them.

Now to Clare Curren of Red Alert, to whose post FairFactsMedia notified me of the other day. Clare says that though she was brought up Catholic, she "can't quite do the God thing." But her Catholic upbringing still directs her in some way and so it's directed her right into the Labour Party.

Perhaps that’s why I’m a member of the Labour Party instead. There’s a set of values that underpin the broader Catholic Church and christianity generally which Labour shares.For social justice, and against greed.

I find this quite revealing and in line with what I've been reading about misdirected faith - when a person of faith loses their faith in God, they direct their faith towards improving the world at the expense of the greater good. Instead of aiming for heaven, they aim for heaven on earth. They become utopians, believing that we can create the perfect society here on earth if only the population would co-operate.

I've listened to sermons that sounded like party political broadcasts and they are boring with a hint of nausea. But when the sermons are actually on Christ and His Gospel and Truth, it shines. They grab you and command attention. No need to teach priests how to speak to stop their parishoners from going to sleep, the subject matter does that for you. The priest who believes is on fire; the guy who's just spouting the formula, heavily laden with social justice themes drones one into insensibility.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen warns us in his book, Those Mysterious Priests, on the danger of this type of politicisation of the Church, a danger that in his time was still to be a future possibility. When Bishops act more like politicians than spiritual leaders we really have to worry, but the signs that things are turning this way, especially in New Zealand are already there.

The gravest danger facing the Church in the future is the politicalization or the turning of theology into politics, seminaries into schools of social service and the preaching of the Word of God into the vague notion of "presence". An intellectual amnesia makes some in the Church forget the demonic power that is hidden behind the exousiai or the powers of the world (1 Corinthians 15:24). Forgotten, too, is the fact that prayer is the most important political action the Christian can possibly take. Prayer-life is far more important that all the protests, burnings, demonstrations, praying on Fifth Avenue for TV cameras and fasting on City Hall steps to the utter oblivion of: "When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They make their faces unsightly so that other people (NBC, ABC, and CBS) may see they are fasting" (Matthew 6:16). In almost every instance where priests and religious have divorced the Christ Who is Offerer and Offered, it has resulted in a decline of prayer, a betrayal of revealed truth or apostasy. What is actually going on is a sacerdotal vulgarisation of political extremism. Because the Church has sometimes been behind in implementing social justice, some clerics soaring from ignorance to rapture, turn pulpits into secondhand revolutionary verbiage and vacuous sociological rock and roll. They become the tails of kites, and homiletic spray guns. When the Anti-Christ appears he will be, as St Thomas Aquinas warns, a Potestas Politica, a Political Power."

Already, with Clare Curren's understanding of the the values that underpin both the Church and the Labour Party, we can see the Catholic Church here in New Zealand has lost her way. The Church is not so much for "social justice" as she is for human beings loving their neighbour as themselves, and she is not so much Just against greed, as she is against people committing any of the capital sins: pride, greed, gluttony, lust, sloth, envy, wrath. I'd say the Labour Party, while seeking to show itself to be against greed, is totally on board with practising and encouraging envy. Without their envy politics, I doubt they'd even survive.

Now Clare Curren, in her post got a little excited about a document released recently by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Tonight Last night I watched a programme on Sky News (Australia) called Mamamia where a pannelist referred to this article, where the Vatican (or the social justice branch of the Vatican) called for morality to be put back into the heart of economics. And radical reform of the world’s financial systems, including the creation of a global political authority to manage the economy.
I’m not sure morality was ever in the heart of economics. But mark my words. There’s a change happening in our world.
Greed is not ok. Poverty is not ok.
Politicians, social justice activists and those of many religious faiths across our world are forming a new community as we speak. I support that community as long as it’s not driven by vested interests and greed. And the Vatican needs to demonstrate that to the world.

I'm not surprised that Laborites who have transferred their faith into political action would find the document exciting. How could a socialist resist the force of Catholicism calling for a world wide financial authority. It would be more than their dream come true and a strong step towards global governance. The problem is that the members of the Council who released this document went way over the mandate of the Church and suggested solutions that are contrary to what Pope Benedict XVI has written about. And now the Vatican has swung into full on damage control.